I visited the public library today with the intention of checking my email, when lo and behold, I discovered IE7 was installed on each computer on the second floor. Since IE7 officially can’t be installed on my home computer (it can only run on versions of Windows XP with SP2), I seized the opportunity for a quick post.

Note: This entry is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the new Web browser Internet Explorer 7, but rather my first reactions and initial complaints.

My friend S-chan once told me that IE7 was “a bastardized version of Mozilla Firefox.” Somewhat true, although the graphical user interface forcibly reminded me of Opera 9.

Promising new features:

• Improved security
• RSS support
• Browser tabs (finally!)
• ClearType — smooths the appearance of text on the screen, eliminating pixellated font
• 1px dotted borders, instead of erroneous dashed borders
• Support for transparent PNGs
• Support for max-width, min-width, etc.
• Improved CSS support overall, apparently (including corrected bugs that plagued previous versions of IE)

Some caveats:

• IE7 cannot be installed on Windows XP operating systems without the Service Pack 2
• IE7 “fixed” some common CSS hacks, including the Tan Hack (* html). This’ll definitely complicate my existence as a simple Web designer…
• The ClearType font, although easier on the eyes, is a little disconcerting…
• IE7 messes up this blog’s layout (the current Orange Jellies theme) because of my dependence on the Tan Hack.

Other than that, I now agree with S-chan’s “bastardized” comment. IE7 doesn’t score much points on originality, since much of the touted “new features” were already implemented long ago among its competitors. And the new IE logo is just a twist on the old one, which frankly looks a bit cheesy.

School ended yesterday for holiday break, and not a day too soon.

What else…

Oh yes, I’m completely crazy about the Japanese rock group, Do As Infinity (now disbanded). Back in middle school (during my Inuyasha fandom days), I had already been introduced to the songs “Fukai Mori,” “Shinjitsu no Uta,” and “Rakuen,” but I still wasn’t very familiar with them. However, all of that changed when I recently acquired their first two albums, Break of Dawn and New World. And let me tell you… what a band!

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There was an interesting documentary on TV tonight. Apparently, Diane Sawyer (a U.S. journalist, if I’m not mistaken) and a crew of cameramen received special permission from the North Korean government to film daily life in their country. People from the government — called “minders,” if I recall correctly — accompanied them all the way, mainly to ensure the cameras didn’t stray from the government-approved areas. And while I watched the common people lead painfully solemn and spartan lives, dedicate their entire existence to serving their Dear Father, demonstrate no conception of recreational activities whatsoever, and accept without question the anti-American and anti-Western ideas and propaganda they have known since infancy, I, an Asian American and a citizen of a capitalist nation, felt an unfamiliar emotion seize me…

I realized that I envy them. Very much.

When S-chan declared that I was “deranged” during her psychoanalysis, would this be further proof?

Am I in dire need of psychiatric attention?

Finally, after nearly six grueling hours, four of them before a panel of six judges, on the fateful day of Saturday, December 2… I passed my first-degree black belt test.

(哈哈，對了！你們沒有聽錯！My new belt even has my name embroidered on it!)

However, I must confess. Up to the beginning of this school year, I had never seriously envisioned myself wearing the coveted first dan black belt. And during the test, a part of me continued to pessimistically maintain that the instructors would fail me. But I still made it, miraculously. And my Taekwondo school is supposedly one of the toughest and most prestigious in our state, if not the entire nation.

Still, do I completely and wholly deserve this honor? Probably not. I mixed up two of my knife defends during the test, and my free sparring was… lackluster. They somehow escaped the judges’ notice, apparently (but I doubt that, seeing as they would have to be complete dunces to do so). I’m assuming that they chose to overlook it, either generously attributing it to nerves, or because they simply weren’t willing to refund the testing fees.

Anyway… today is my sixteenth birthday. Students under sixteen years of age receive poom belts instead of the regular ones, so I technically was a first poom for one day, although the school went ahead and ordered the first dan belt for me instead. Phooey.

最後，謝謝妳，K-chan！Many thanks for watching me test, as well as the congratulatory hugs.